The band Todd Rundgren wishes he never met: “A let-down”
In the 1960s, all the coolest cats in town had an air of mystery about them. From John Lennon to Janis Joplin, even the most ubiquitous stars were emboldened by an enigmatic edge.
In the 21st century, that cool mystique has all but vanished in favour of commercial overload. Jim Morrison would no doubt embarrass himself with late-night social media posts, Bob Dylan would make a public apology for ‘Masters of War’, and Nico would do a Coca-Cola advert.
Because of this, it has become much harder for the stars of today to be mythologised in the way they once were. From David Bowie to The Beatles, the icons of yore were godlike presences that shook up the mundanity of modern life. For a generation, they were the figures onto which you could project your own hopes and dreams.
While Todd Rundgren was growing up in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, he longed for larger dreams than the small town could offer. As he taught himself guitar, he had designs to rival the magic of the Fab Four. He wasn’t alone on this front. For an entire generation, their larger-than-life emergence became a symbol of hope, and that symbology began to hang heavy around their necks.
Beyond the music, their appeal had always been that they were effortlessly breezy, fantastically fun, and friendly to a charming extreme. That’s a very difficult persona to uphold permanently. Especially, once you’ve been through the rigours of unprecedented fame. Yet they were such fixtures in the lives of a legion of young fans in the ’60s that there was almost an unspoken understanding that they would remain that way forever. Their importance was such that a world without them would be akin to waking up and finding that the sky was no longer blue.
Perhaps that goes part of the way to explaining why Rundgren was so appalled by them when he did finally meet the Fab Four after rising to fame with Nazz. While he famously had a spat with Lennon when the pair exchanged public letters about the bespectacled Beatle’s revolting/revolutionary ways, it is less well known that he would encounter all the Beatles in turn over the years and only had a good word to say about one of them.
“Ringo was the most approachable of all of The Beatles,” he would later tell Classic Rock. “I have met each of the band in turn. If you grew up on A Hard Day’s Night and Help! and watched The Beatles’ antics, to actually meet them in person was often a let-down. For instance, Paul McCartney was an unusually dour person, and John was totally drunk and inanimate. George, I met very briefly when I was producing a Badfinger album.”
Each of these encounters diminished the view Rundgren once had of his former heroes. He’d even go a bit more lukewarm on their music and memory. “You expected cleverness and a happy-go-lucky demeanour because of the image they projected up until the point they broke up,” he said.
He saw them as individuals saddled by heavy baggage and sagging under the weight. In his view, Ringo was the beneficiary of fewer expectations, and he remained chirpy and caring as a result. “
The only one who seemed to have recovered from any of the effects of that was Ringo. He did the music for fun. He didn’t feel that there was some burden to it, he just liked to play. Any opportunity to sing was fine but I never saw him having any pretence that he was building some giant musical legacy,” he concluded.
